This whole copyright quagmire......

[Mike Anderson]

...
Two answers to that: open standards and trade secrets. Standards and interoperability are hugely valuable to society as a whole because they promote competition and prevent arbitrary obsolescence. The other thing is that commercial software is generally published only as a binary and therefore its operation is a trade secret. You can keep a trade secret for as long as you like. Doesn't matter if copyright expired if you're the only one holding the source code! The flipside to relying on trade secrets is that if what your product does is so obvious that someone else can figure out how it works, you have no effective protection... which is as it should be. Anyone can make a bicycle, therefore many companies do so.

I don't understand. If the object code copyright has expired in 5 years, keeping the trade secret (source code) secret doesn't do much.

[Steve Smith]

The doctor never developed any software, he just has a patent.

And the best thing about a patent is that you only have to have the idea, you don't need to get the idea to work.


Steve.

[Steve Smith]

I don't understand. If the object code copyright has expired in 5 years, keeping the trade secret (source code) secret doesn't do much.

If the copyright has run out, that doesn't mean you have to give the source code to anyone who asks for it. You can still keep it to yourself.


Steve.

[polyglot]

Having the object code doesn't mean you can use it (you have it under a license that you agreed to, you didn't purchase it) and not having the source means you cannot use the program to compete against itself.

If you want to get yourself all angry sometime, google for "patent troll". IMHO most patent litigation (at least for software) is patent-trolling.

[BetterSense]

Having the object code doesn't mean you can use it (you have it under a license that you agreed to, you didn't purchase it) and not having the source means you cannot use the program to compete against itself.

I believe that it's only copyright that makes such a license possible, though.

[rdenney]

If you want to get yourself all angry sometime, google for "patent troll". IMHO most patent litigation (at least for software) is patent-trolling.

Well, maybe not "most". But I agree.

In other industries, patent applications have to show how the patented process is unique from prior art, but it also has to show its practical value. And it cannot be overly broad. In the software world, it just doesn't seem to be that way. There are many, many companies that patent obvious processes that are broadly defined, and then spend all their time looking for products that might infringe on their patent. Then, they sue. Trolls? More like robbers hiding in the forest, ambushing passersby and extorting money from them.

But the pendulum can swing too far the other way, effectively eliminating an incentive to create new technologies and approaches. That's what the founders had in mind when they established the first 17-year patent and 28-year copyright. For them, it provided balance--an opportunity for someone to benefit from bringing their own good idea to market, and then an orderly process for moving that art into the public domain. The terms have lengthened as a result of political influence (damn democracy!), but eliminating them altogether could have a range of unforeseen consequences.

I would favor laws and their interpretation providing that software be protected only by copyright (and considering that a copy is just that--the preponderance of the evidence suggests the infringer explicitly took the content from the infringed), and that patents for software are subject to same standards of uniqueness, narrowness, and demonstration of practical value as patents in other industries.

Rick "good friend of a very high-end software IP attorney" Denney

[Jim Andrada]

Re the comment a while back that the picture was fabricated in a 3D program. Not sure it wasn't just Photoshop but I sent a link to a friend who is an aficionado of the London busses - he said that the bus in the picture is a Routemaster and that they never used them on the route that goes across that bridge.

I wouldn't know myself, but just passing it on FWIW

[Steve Smith]

he said that the bus in the picture is a Routemaster and that they never used them on the route that goes across that bridge.

I'm sure I have seen them there. RMs were used on just abut every London route.


Steve.

[Jim Andrada]

OK - I'll bug him about it. He's even older than me (and I'm 71) so maybe he's forgotten!